Charlie’s List, or “214 Keyboard Shortcuts”

One of the program managers on my team (Charlie) has put together a list of 214 keyboard shortcuts available in Excel. While it isnât exhaustive (for example, it doesnât cover shortcuts available in dialogs), I find it a useful presentation of the shortcuts that are available when performing basic editing in Excel, so I thought I would share it with you. If you click the picture below, you will access a PDF file which you can download and print. (The PDF was generated by a recent build of Microsoft Excel 2007). The items in orange are new to Excel 2007 (there may be a few more coming too).

(Click to save)

The other thing I wanted to do today was to evangelize a few of my favourites, some of which are more esoteric than others. Here are some pretty self-explanatory ones that come in pretty handy once you know them (mostly shortcuts to dialogs). There are many others in this category in the list.

Ctrl + 1 â format cells dialog

Shift + F3 – Function Wizard

Ctrl + F3 – Define Names Dialog

Next, there are a lot of commands to do common things you do all the time in Excel. Here are some I use frequently.

Ctrl + Page Up and Ctrl + Page Down – previous/next worksheet

Shift + Space â select row

Ctrl + Space â select column

Ctrl + 0 â hide column

Shift + Ctrl + 0 â show column

Ctrl + 9 â hide row

Shift + Ctrl + 9 â show row

Ctrl + â – Copy above cell and edit

Alt + Down – Open drop-down (auto-complete, filter, pick from list, or validation)

Ctrl + / – Select Array

F9 â Calculate

Shift + F9 – Calculate sheet (in the active workbook)

Then, there are a whole group that relate to selection in Excel â selecting ranges, navigating selection, etc. By way of background, Excel has a few selection âmodesâ which you can turn on and off. âExtend selection modeâ, when turned on, simply expands selection from the active cell when you move around using the mouse or keyboard. âAdd selection modeâ adds to existing selection when you select cells (using either the mouse or toggling on âExtent selection modeâ). These are handy for keyboard-intensive users. Here are some examples.

F8 â Extend selection mode

Shift F8 â Add selection mode

Shift + Backspace – Collapse selection to the active cell

Ctrl+ Backspace – Show active cell (particularly handy if you have a large range selected and the active cell is off the screen)